Big Wave Surfing, how much do you love your work as an artist?
One winter I was on a painting trip in Oahu, when I went for a drive to the pipeline to watch some of the big wave surfers catch some big ones…. Scores of surfers and tourists sat on the shore and watched in awe at these tiny specks, dwarfed by massive crashing waves as high as buildings, and marveled at the courage of man. Last week was the Mavericks Surf contest in Half Moon Bay and today the elite of the world surfers wait on call, for the go ahead for Eddie Aikau invitational big wave surf event at the Pipeline in Hawaii, for the waves to meet the 40 foot requirement…. As well as being superb athletes they spend hours studying weather patterns, ocean currents and whatever it takes to understand the movement of the ocean…. The first thing I do when I arrive in a beautiful place such as Hawaii is spend a few days just looking at the ocean. Studying it’s waves, it’s light, it’s energy until I feel I have reached an understanding of the special gifts that the location has to offer…. You have to love it and be willing to do whatever it takes to master your craft. You have to have a big vision and you have to have a big passion for the vision that you want to share with the world.
“The Eloquent Nude” – an excellent documentary on the life of photographer Edward Weston
Must see! An excellent beautifully photographed documentary on the relationship and art travels of photographer Edward Weston, and his muse and writer, Charis Wilsdon.
Hawaii Photos Published in Schmap travel guide
Some of my photos from the Big Island have been published in the Schmap Hawaii Guide. You can check them out through the following widget.
A Call To All Artists
Here’s a call to action from Nietzsche: “We, the new, the nameless, the hard-to-understand, we firstlings of a yet untried future – we require for a new end also a new means, namely, a new healthiness, stronger, sharper, tougher, bolder, and merrier than any healthiness hitherto. He whose soul longs to experience the whole range of hitherto recognized values and desirabilities, and to circumnavigate all the coasts of this ideal “Mediterranean Sea” who, from the adventures of his most personal experience, wants to know how it feels to be a conqueror and discoverer of the ideal – as likewise how it is with the artist, the saint, the legislator, the sage, the scholar, the devotee, the prophet, and the godly Nonconformist of the old style: __ requires one thing above all for that purpose, great healthiness – such healthiness as one not only possesses, but also constantly acquires and must acquire, because one continually sacrifices it again, and must sacrifice it! __ And now, after having being long on the way in this fashion, we Argonauts of the Ideal, who are more courageous perhaps than prudent, and often enough shipwrecked and brought to grief, nevertheless, as said above, healthier than people would like to admit, dangerously healthy, always healthy again, __ it would seem, as if in recompense for it all, that we still have an undiscovered country before us, the boundaries of which no one has yet seen, a beyond to all countries and corners of the ideal known hitherto, a world so over-rich in the beautiful, the strange, the questionable, the frightful, and the divine, that our curiosity as well as our thirst for the possession thereof, have got out of hand __ alas! that nothing will any longer satisfy us!
Andrea Zittel at the Whitney
Andrea and her friends who live at Joshua Tree talked about their influences and experiences on building community in the context of art. Here’s what the Whitney had to say about the event: “Well known for her research and design of domestic and external environments, Andrea Zittel creates experimental models for contemporary life, or what she calls “systems for living.” Her current project, the desert studio and home A-Z West in Joshua Tree, California, explores all aspects of the everyday, from home furniture and house guests to food and clothing, as part of her investigation into the contours of human nature and human needs. One such A-Z project, Wagon Stations, comprises mobile living stations customized by individuals invited to join Zittel’s desert community; several will be on view beginning February 9 at the Whitney Museum at Altria.”… As Andrea herself has to say of the desert: “After living in the desert for six years, I have come to believe that most of us are drawn here because each of us is looking for some version of personal freedom.”… A Wagon in It’s Native Environment A Wagon Station from the installation at the Whitney, Altria The panel itself meandered across a lot of different territories, from activist 60s art to camping out in a large tent in the middle of the Freize Art Fair, in London…. This is what it must be like to live fully in the artist archetype, not an small pokey garret, starving but noble, but in a world of childlike wonder, innocence, creating magnificent worlds of your own choosing, without regard to whether of not anyone else gets it…. Further thoughts from “The Artist’s Mentor”: “In one of his letters from Tahiti, Gaugin had written that he felt he had to go back beyond the horses of the Parthenon, back to the rocking-horse of his childhood…. Many artists feel that the museums and exhibitions are full of works of such amazing facility and skill that nothing is gained by continuing along those lines; that they are in danger of losing their souls and becoming slick manufacturers of paintings or sculptures unless they become as little children.
Back from Painting Trip
One lovely man that I met, called xxx, was captain of the the Tall Ship Rose, a replica of an 18th century Royal Navy frigate that cruised the American coast during the Revolutionary War…. Here’s a bit of history: “The Fine Arts Work Center buildings are historic art studios in a town that is famous for its contributions to art history…. Eugene O’Neill wrote his first play here at a time when he was known to the art community as an obscure writer of one-act plays…. In the late 20′s, he was known by the artists not as a writer but as a painter who showed his paintings with them at the local Provincetown Art Association…. Among his students in the teens were Edwin Dickinson, Ross Moffett and Karl Knaths, all living and working in the studios of 24 Pearl Street, and later gaining national and international acclaim. Fritz Bultman, Paul Burlin, Adolph Gottlieb, Helen Frankenthaler, Myron Stout, and Marsden Hartley are among other famous artists who worked in these studios. Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, Claus Oldenburg, Milton Avery, Jack Tworkov and Edward Hopper have all participated in the art community here. Important paintings by Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, Stuart Davis, and Edward Hopper have centered around their involvement in this small seaport town.”
On Location, Painting in Cape Cod
I’m on a painting trip in Cape Cod, experiencing glorious fall weather and painting oceans and marshes. Cape Cod has a rich tradition as an artist’s colony with painters such as Henry Hensch and Charles Hawthorn, the impressionists, through to Hans Hoffman and Mark Rothko, the abstract expressionists. Thoreau made Cape Cod famous in his book of the same name. I have been finding the light especially gorgeous and have been doing two paintings a day since I got here – an early morning and a late afternoon set up…. The National Park “Province Lands” is just a mile from where I am camped and I have a choice of several elevated locations from which to paint the surrounding dunes and ocean. The photo above is one of the marshes in the national park and a great source of lights and darks for a late afternoon painting session. Capturing the water and the waterlilies floating on the surface is especially interesting. I like the curve of the foliage along the edges.
Robert Smithson at the Whitney
Recently I visited the Robert Smithson exhibition at the Whitney. Smithson believed that art existed beyond the confines of the museum. His work covered a wide range: earthworks, sculpture, photography and film. His themes were the landscape, language, the monument and site specific artworks.
Cezanne, Pissarro, Gauguin Symposium at Moma
A couple of weekends ago I spent a day listening to different ideas on what motivated the intense friendship between the artist Cezanne and his master and friend, Pissarro…. Here’s what I learned from Richard: CEZANNE AND PISSARO Cezanne and Pissaro were friends for 15 years. Pissaro was a generous man and was always a central figure in all the various artistic groups of his day. He was also different from the other artists, older, fiercely intelligent, he came from a larger world…. The impressionists painted not only in response to a motif but also in response to their companion artist. Through the conflict of opposition in ideas and style, they struggled to find their voice as an artist through opposition to the other…. The paintings were painted with the idea that the other artist would see it and would respond. As a result, studying the paintings tell us a huge amount about the relationship between Cezanne and Pissaro which is why the exhibition at the MoMA with the paired paintings was such an excellent opportunity to see into the worlds of these two great artists.
Friday’s Featured Painting – Kona Morning
The light in Kona haunts me. This painting was created in the early morning with the light washing out the windswept bay in the distance.
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